Important Tip on Recurring Sales Receipts with Payments

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When I show this trick to users I always get an "ahhhhh" or "wow." Warning: This is fun.

Recurring Transaction Sales Receipts with Recurring Payments is a QBO must use. There are so many reasons to take advantage of this QBO Amazing feature.

I have written about Recurring Transaction Sales Receipts with Recurring Payments before, so this might feel like deja vu. But I thought I'd go over this feature again, since I had a client skipping one important step and it changed the experience from fun to frustrating.

My favorite types of companies to use this feature are any type of recurring service-based business such as landlords, alarm companies, HOA fees or even recurring company transfers. An added bonus of using ACH as the method of payment is its free. 

Can you say win? 

So, what was the little step my client was forgetting?

To check. mark the “have authorization” check box. Skipping this little box resulted in Sales Receipts with no payment being authorized.

Let me walk you through the setup steps and how to assure you also are taking advantages of one of the "Best QBO" features.

Create Recurring Transaction

1. From the Company Gear Icon, Select Recurring Transactions

2. Select New, then from Transaction Type, select Sales Receipt

3. Add the Recurring Sales Receipt details to the transaction (shown in the illustration below), including the Template Name, Customer, Intervals (how often to create); then setup the Payment method and Income items and Save.

4. This is it. You can actually stop here, because this is all that is needed to create these amazing Income Generating Recurring transactions. But read on to see what my client did that resulted in an incomplete Recurring Transaction. 

Troubleshooting the Error

This is where my client forgot to check the box saying they ”have authorization” to process payments. (See the red box above.) Forgetting to checkmark this box resulted in no actual payments.

 If you have a user who does this same thing and forgets to checkmark the box, you should view merchant services payments and verify that no payment has been processed. To do this, open the client's merchant service account and look for payments matching the recurring template.

To look at a QBO merchant service account follow these steps:

  1. Click the Company Gear Icon
  2.  Select Accounts and Settings
  3.  Choose Payments
  4. Go To Merchant Account
  5. Choose Activity & Reports
  6. Select Transactions along with the appropriate date range 

When the Report opens, double-check that "no" payments have been processed matching the sales receipt.

Missing the one small step (shown in the red box earlier in the Sales Receipt transaction) can produce a sales receipt with "no" payments. This results in a sales receipt increasing the income on a Profit and Loss but with no real income in the actual bank account.

If this does happen, the easy fix is to open the sales receipt and place a checkmark in the “have authorization” box and save. This will result in a real payment being drafted from the bank account.

Recurring Transaction Sales Receipts with Recurring Payments is an amazing feature and a huge timesaver for those types of businesses with recurring income.

I have received lots of love for this QBO Rock Star.